The state of the roads and the growing pothole problem has once again been featured by the national and local media. For decades Shropshire has had a reputation for poor roads, often readily apparent to road users as they crossed the county border. Yet the Conservatives solution is to make £5m cuts in roads in 2018/19 and in 2019/20!
For Shropshire, they have a colossal road network with some 3,138 miles of road, which has always proven a challenge to maintain. Nearly 3x the bigger the national average and more than double the average for the West Midlands.
One big problem Shropshire Council has is that it doesn’t know the age of its roads!
£5m cuts in roads in 2018/19 and 2019/20
Queens Head Pothole is dangerous
Google Street view of the repaired pothole in March 2009
Another Google view of the repaired pothole – coloured Green
Fast forward 9 years and look at how the pothole has grown!
Pothole at Queens Head 25th of February 2018. Green is another previous repair attempt. Orange indicates the area of the old repair that has been scrubbed away exposing the binding layer. Red is the area where the scrubbing is so severe that the sub-base is now exposed.
13th of March 2018: Compacted loose chippings have been used to fill in the pothole. Even for a temporary repair, it isn’t the best as the puddles indicate. In this situation that repair will only last for a few days.
So I went to have another look a few days later and recorded the above video on the 22nd of March.
By the 22nd of March, the temporary repair was already being dug out
Traffic volumes 2000-2016
(2017 data gets added in May/June 2018)
Cars and particularly Vans are trending upwards at an accelerating rate, whilst HGVs are ticking down.
Excluding the cars shows the upward trend in LGV or Vans. HGVs are trending down but there is a small uptick in 2015-16.
Drilling into the HGVs a bit further… HGV with bigger axel numbers are increasing…
Excluding the 2 axle and 3/4 axle articulated lorries we can see that the trend is clearly up for HGVs with the workload of the former now done by Vans
Overall this shows is the impact of online shopping on journeys and supports what we all know – that retail shops are under severe pressure and that Royal mail delivers many more parcels and fewer letters as more shopping is done online.
What that means for Whittington, West Felton and beyond is worse roads for years to come unless something dramatic happens. Unlikely without a change at local and national level. More expenditure that is out of control and more costly insurance claims.
Pothole insurance claims:
- 2014: 188 pothole claims. 25 claims against Highways insurance amounted to £31,000.
- 2015: 159 pothole claims. There were 46 injuries caused by potholes and they paid out £20,721.50 on 6 of those claims.
- 2016: 179 Pothole claims, 11 of which they accepted liability and paid out over £20,000.
- 2017: 106 pothole claims.
Update: 2018 Jan – May
Pothole claims shot up by 653% to 798 claims
The total cost of claims rose by staggering 845% to nearly £345,000
Pothole at Queens Head/Rednal Mile Junction in West Felton (taken on 25th February 2018)
Sub-base aggregate (projectiles) from the pothole thrown across the road and pavement by vehicles presents a hazard and a danger to all road users and adjoining properties.
Pothole Formation
General wear and tear on roads from increased axle weight, increased traffic volumes, combined with adverse weather conditions – be that too hot or too cold leading to binding tar drying out with age, can all lead to tiny fissures forming in a road surface.
Water penetrated into the surface and freezes. This pushes up the road surface in cold weather. Once this thaws the void below collapse the road when traffic drives across the voids and fissures. Over time the road crumbles or collapses into the voids producing the pothole – initially quite small. Successively this process continues and the hole progressively gets bigger. Once a weakness has formed as standing water in it will explode outwards under compression by a tyre further accelerating the growth of the hole through explosive percussion. Once the pothole is formed the surface with be loose and present a skidding risk as well as a hazard for all road users.
Public Domain image from Wikipedia
Great video David! It’s the same round here – I suppose the temporary job they are doing on the potholes makes it better for a while – but they will soon be back to square one. So at least two visits to the same pothole
yes and they get progressively bigger each time
thanks Helen
I~ asked the question on a different post last night about how many pot holes could be repaired at £80 ish per hole with a £1.8m budget split over 5 areas and the gentleman has not responded. I know it’s hard on the ShropshireCouncil appointed contractor (new ones take over April 1st) but are we only going to see patching rather than proper repars? We all know that with a good storm of rain that the patching will wash out so more money is needed from somewhere to give us roads to be proud of (like in Powys) rather than roads we would rather not drive on
Cold fill hand filled holes might only last 4 months. They will spread money so thin we will probably only get papering over cracks lol
4months if we’re lucky I fear but better than gaping craters but when you think of the cost of claims it’s probably better to do a proper job in the first place
Yep. They have painted around the ones they know about. Cynical me thinks that is so they hope drivers avoid them so they save on claims. Got some here where painted every other one lol
Hope new contractors does a better job but doubt will see much improvement. Going to buy a moon buggy on ebay
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